On and off over the last few weeks I’ve been following media warnings that all hell is going to break lose in refugee camps worldwide where tens of thousands of refugees are packed together in filthy conditions (so we are told), and yet still no serious outbreak of the Chinese virus.
What gives?
Maybe it is too soon, maybe the crisis is yet to come, but if it doesn’t what does that tell us about the whole concept of social distancing as we stay behind our closed doors with the monster menacing on our doorstep.
I checked again this morning and the latest dire warning comes from PBS Frontlineabout the large Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
A week earlier the UN said it would be “devastating” if the virus arrived in the camp. Two weeks ago we reported on the anticipated “carnage” to come.
But before we get to that, it’s time for a trip down memory lane!
Ifirst wrote about Cox’s Bazar over ten years ago when even Time magazine was reporting that it was an Islamic terrorist hidey-hole.
This is what Time said (link is now dead, so it’s a good thing I snipped it!) about Cox’s Bazar:
Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.
That was all before the Rohingya became the media-created poster children for Muslim oppression by the Buddhists of Burma.***
Facing COVID-19 in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, Young Rohingya Help Prepare for an Outbreak
Every day, before dawn breaks, a student named Robi wakes up in the world’s largest refugee camp to pray.
Until a few weeks ago, many of those prayers were made at a local mosque, one of the few safe havens for his displaced community of Rohingya Muslims living in Cox’s Bazar, on Bangladesh’s sandy southeast coast. But the mosques and schools are now closed, as the threat of the novel coronavirus creeps closer to this vulnerable, tightly packed group.
The first case was confirmed within the local community last month, and the number of cases is growing. [That would be March, so where are the cases a month later?—ed]
Athena Rayburn of Save the Children
“We’re very much on borrowed time,” said Athena Rayburn, Save the Children’s humanitarian advocacy manager in Cox’s Bazar.
[….]
In late March, in a bid to stem the spread of the virus, the government restricted camp access to the more than 100 aid agencies working there. Now, only frontline workers deemed critical are being allowed in. They’re providing food and some medical aid, Rayburn said, but the services “are not currently sufficient to treat an outbreak.”
[….]
In Cox’s Bazar, there’s no such thing as social distancing.
Here, people pack together at an average of 100,000 people per square mile — far closer quarters than on a cruise ship. In these cramped quarters, accessing clean water and proper hygiene can be difficult. “People are very worried and upset,” said Mohammad Arfaat, a 25-year-old Rohingya filmmaker who lives in the camp with his family. “People are living together and sharing toilet you know, water pipe, everything, so if anyone is infected in the camp it will be very harmful.”
We will keep an eye on this story and report when/if the Chinese Virus arrives at Cox’s Bazar. (Bangladesh at present has over 6,000 cases.) If it doesn’t arrive in the camps in any significant way what will we learn from that lesson—that social distancing doesn’t matter, or perhaps that the media is whipping up fear (again) to create sympathy for the Rohingya?
We will be watching!
***I have an extensive archive with 231 previous posts I call Rohingya Reports for your reading pleasure (during your COVID incarceration). You need to know more about this ethnic group since it is one of the few Muslim refugee groups being admitted to the US in recent years. (Besides the Afghan special refugees.)
The Rohingya are another devout Muslim ethnic group that the Trump Administration must beware of! These wandering Rohingya cannot be vetted any better than the Syrians or the Somalis. THE GANG IS ALL HERE! SO SEND THEM TO CANADA! Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship John McCallum, Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and George Soros, Founder and Chairman, Open Society Foundations, meet during the Concordia Summit in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is out scouting the world for pockets of people they can persuade first world countries to take. And, now, thanks to this news story, I see why Muslim Bangladesh stopped allowing the UNHCR to process, out of that country, Rohingya migrants who came there from Burma.
You should know that the Burmese say that the Rohingya are from Bangladesh originally anyway.
If Bangladesh allows the ‘refugee’ processing to move forward, just like has happened in Malta, it will create a huge pull factor and more Rohingya will try to flood Bangladesh (a Muslim country btw) in hopes of getting to the US (or Canada, or Australia). Well, maybe not the US now as many fear Trump. Go here and see that we have already taken 13,500 Rohingya during the Obama Administration.
From the Times of India:
MYANMAR: The United Nations’ refugee agency has asked Bangladesh to allow it to negotiate with the United States, Canada and some European countries to resettle around 1,000 Rohingya Muslims living in the South Asian nation, a senior official at the agency said.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya live in Bangladesh after fleeing Buddhist-majority Myanmar since the early 1990s, and their number has been swelled by an estimated 69,000 escaping an army crackdown in northern Rakhine State in recent months.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would push for resettlement of those most in need, despite growing resistance in some developed countries, particularly the United States under President Donald Trump, UNHCR’s Bangladesh representative, Shinji Kubo, told Reuters on Thursday.
Activities of the UNHCR actually spur migration of third worlders!
Canada, Australia and the United States were the top providers of asylum to Rohingya Muslims who came to Bangladesh from Myanmar before Dhaka stopped the programme around 2012. A Bangladesh government official said it was feared the programme would encourage more people from Myanmar to use it as a transit country to seek asylum in the West.
Yikes! Until I found that photo (BT=Before Trump) at the Huffington Post, I had no idea that Soros was such pals with the UNHCR Grandi. Grandi replaced Antonio Guterres.
So let Canada take them and then we secure our northern border! (Just a joke dear Canadian readers!)
See our Rohingya Reports category with its 197 previous posts! It is another opportunity if anyone out there who wants to write a book! Research is done!
Several readers sent me this important article by Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage magazine, published last week, entitled, ‘Beheadings, Bombings and New York’s Little Bangladesh.’ They wanted to know if most of these Bangladeshis taking over neighborhoods in NYC are “refugees.”
Well, no, not technically. We have only taken a handful of Bangladeshis directly from Bangladesh through the Refugee Program in the ten years reported in the most recent Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) report to Congress. If you have never looked at these reports, which the ORR is notoriously late on producing, then check this one out. Tables near the end, have stats on who we admitted in the previous ten years. I also went back to the years 1983-2000 and we did not bring any Bangladeshi “refugees.”
Rasel Siddiquee (left) is charged with beheading landlord. http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Arrest-Made-Brooklyn-Building-Beheading-Kensingon-239213971.html
Here is Greenfield:
Bangladesh is more than 90 percent Muslim. Hindus are being attacked in the streets of its cities by Islamist mobs because Islam does not co-exist. The other religions of the city do not demand that everyone join them or acknowledge their supremacy and pay them protection money for the right to exist.
Islam does.
Its immigration is also a Jihad, a form of supremacist manifest destiny to colonize the Dar al-Harb and subdue it to the will of a dead prophet with sheer numbers or sheer force. [Al-Hijra!—ed]
The number of Bangladeshis in New York has increased by 20 percent in only four years to an estimated 74,000. And those numbers don’t take into account the unofficial Mohammeds living in basements while nursing their murderous grudges.
Diversity Visa Lottery!
So, not refugees as such! However, one absolutely insane immigration program we have is the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery’(sometimes called the green card lottery) to allow immigrants into the US from countries that have not sent us 50,000 in the past. Bangladeshis took so much interest and won so many lotteries over 5 years that they are now banned from participating. By the way, there are US lawyers who help the hopeful lottery participants craft their applications to get them just right, thus enhancing their chances of ‘winning.’
Here is what we learnedat the Bangladesh US Embassy website:
The Diversity Visa Program in Bangladesh ended in October 2012. The DV program no longer exists in Bangladesh since Bangladesh has sent more than 50,000 new permanent resident visa holders to the United States over the past five years.
Once they have a foot in the door, then through family reunification (chain migration!) they bring in the extended family!
It is possible that some Bangladeshis came as asylum seekers, but I don’t know that. And, surely, some are here illegally. As is the case this time, rarely does the mainstream media give us any information about the immigration status of alleged murderers and criminals like Siddiquee.
Endnote: It should be mentioned that some experts believe that the Burmese Rohingya Muslims are actually from Bangladesh. We are bringing in some Rohingya Muslims who may be attracted to the Bangladeshi neighborhoods since they speak a dialect similar to the Bangladeshis and not so similar to the Burmese dialects. I believe that Esar Met, the recently convicted child rapist and murderer, is a Rohingya, but he is only described generically as a Burmese Muslim tragically placed in a Burmese Christian apartment building.
Fearing militant attacks, law enforcers have kept close and constant surveillance on at least 40 Islamist groups in the country.
According to the intelligence department, supporters of those Islamist outfits are plotting to launch militant attacks by whipping up the masses through anti-government propaganda.
The members of law enforcing agencies were asked to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious by those Islamist organisations.
The 40 Islamist groups under intelligence watch are: International Khatme Nabuat Movement,Arakan Rohingya Force, Islamic Solidarity Font, Arakan People’s Army, Liberation Myanmar Force, Arakan Mujahid Party, Rohingya Independence Force, Rohingya Independence Army, Rohingya Patriotic Front Al-Harat-Al Islamia, Tauhidi Janata, World Islami Front, Jumaatul Al Sadat, Sahadat-e-Nabuat, Allahar Dal, Islamic Front, Jamaat As Sadat, Al-Khidmat, Hizbullah Islami Samaj, Muslim Millat, Sharia Council, Ahle Hadis Andolan Bangladesh, Dawati Kafela, Hizbul Mahdi, Bangladesh Anti-terrorist Party, Al Islam Martians Brigade, Jommiat Ahle Hadis Andolon, Jommiatul Ehzia Utraz, Hayatur Ilaha, Sattabad, Anjumane Talamize Islamia, Kalemar Jamaat, Tazir Bangladesh, Forkan Movement, Sahaba Parishad, Ketal Bahini, Eshar Bahini, Al Fahad, Horkatul Mujahidin, Mujahidin-e-Tazim, Jadid Al-Kayda, Al Markajul Al Islami and Jamatul Falaiya.
Intelligence sources said the parties are mainly active in the Baitul Mukarram Mosque area and Chittagong district.
The Chittagong district is where tens of thousands of Rohingya are living.
Why do we care?
We care because the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (the largest of the top nine federal refugee contractors)testifiedthat they want to resettle Rohingya from Bangladesh to your towns!
Here is what Anastasia Brown told the US State Department on May 15th, in her testimony for the USCCB:
…we strongly believe that the Rohingya in Bangladesh should receive a Priority Two designation from the U.S. government, allowing them to be resettled as members of a persecuted group. [Meaning that someone need only say, I am Rohingya so therefore I am persecuted.—ed]
This is our 147th post in our Rohingya Reports category. We have followed the “humanitarian” agitators public relations campaign to bring more Rohingya to the West ever since we began RRW in 2007.
So, they are now banning some aide groups fearing those groups only attract more Rohingya. I have such a backlog of things I want to post today, so I’m just throwing this one up so as to keep our Rohingya category up-to-date and to make the point again that although Muslims claim to be the most charitable “religion” in the world they are pretty rotten to their own people.
Just a little background, these camps discussed in the story are mostly in and around Cox’s Bazarwhich has in the past been a breeding ground for Islamist terrorist groups (take my word for it we have posts going back 5 years confirming that). Also, remember that the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) wanted to get into Burma to aid the Muslims there and the largely Buddhist country said no.
So my solution to this is let the money-bags of the OIC feed/clothe/house these Muslims in the Muslim country of Bangladesh.
COX’S BAZAR, 17 December 2012 (IRIN) – Some 40,000 undocumented Rohingya refugees are being adversely affected by a government ban four months ago on NGOs working at two makeshift sites in southeastern Bangladesh.
In August, Bangladeshi authorities ordered three NGOs – Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Action Against Hunger and Muslim Aid UK – to stop the formal delivery of humanitarian services, including health care and nutrition assistance to undocumented Rohingya refugees, saying such services would encourage more to flee to Bangladesh.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are more than 200,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh, of whom only 30,000 are documented and living in two government camps assisted by the agency.
Some 12,000 documented refugees live at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar District, with another nearly 18,000 further south at Nayapara – both within 2km of Myanmar. The 40,000 undocumented refugees live on the periphery of the two official camps.
Documented refugees are provided food rations by the World Food Programme (WFP), along with shelter assistance, non-food items, water/sanitation services, vocational training and supplementary feeding for malnourished refugees by UNHCR.
However, most Rohingya – a mainly Muslim ethnic group who fled persecution en masse to Bangladesh from Myanmar’s neighbouring Rakhine State years earlier – are undocumented.
UNHCR has not been permitted to register newly arriving Rohingya since mid-1992.
Only those who are documented receive regular assistance, while those who are undocumented are largely dependent on a handful of international NGOs who until recently were allowed to work in the area.
Why do we care about the UNHCR in Bangladesh and Burma? Because if the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has its way, more Rohingya will be coming to your towns and cities. From testimony at the May 2012 hearing held by the US State Department about resettlements for 2013:
…..one thing that jumped out at me in what I’ve read so far (or heard at the meeting) is that no one spoke for Christians persecuted by Muslims! The US Conference of Catholic Bishops never even mentioned them, but they sure asked the State Department to send more Muslims to the US, in particular, they want more Somalis and Rohingya* (Burmese Muslims)! Several of those testifying also called for the prompt re-opening of the P-3 family reunification program that has been closed for nearly 4 years due to the widespread fraud uncovered involving Africans, mostly Somalis. The State Department has reported that as many as 36,000 Africans entered the US fraudulently in a 5 year period after 9/11!
